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Is There a Cure for Masculinity?

• Why is it so hard to get close to a man? • Why don’t men express emotions except big ones like anger and frustration?

• Why is most perversion male; why is most pornography produced by men for men? Why is risk taking male and drinking, drug taking, gambling and infidelity are predominantly the preserve of men?

• Why is most criminal behavior perpetrated by men? Why is the vast majority of domestic abuse and violence perpetrated by men?

• Why are men so concerned with the size of their penis and its symbolic substitutes – big, powerful cars, status, big houses, big money, and big muscles?

• Why can’t men tolerate vulnerability?

• Why do men lie, don’t listen, don’t do housework, parenting?

The answers to these questions, is the aim of this book. The author asks what it means to be a man, and what part masculinity play in men’s identity. What is it like to have to spend so much time and energy in managing that identity?

Adam Jukes has spent most of his professional life working with troubled and disturbed men, and in 1984 he opened one of the world’s first treatment centers to address men’s abusive and violent behavior towards women, from verbal and emotional abuse through to stalking and murder. In the following decades that work developed into a clinical examination of masculinity and the author now shares his insights and conclusions with the reader.

Juke’s conclusions about what constructs masculinity and how it develops may be unpalatable to some but it is also thought-provoking and intriguing to anyone who has an interest in these issues whether professional or personal, male or female, wife or lover, sister or brother, husband or father. £14.95/$34.50 September 2010 240 pp 9781853432095 pb